Beyond Remigration: A Critical Reflection on the Conversation between Martin Sellner and David Engels

Several important questions therefore formed the background of the conversation. When we speak of “replacement migration”, are we describing a deliberate political project, an unintended structural process, or simply the demographic consequence of several political, economic and social developments occurring simultaneously? Equally important is the legal definition of remigration itself. Does it concern only illegal migrants and rejected asylum seekers, or can it also include legal residents, naturalised citizens, second- and third-generation immigrants and people who are considered culturally insufficiently assimilated? Once the discussion moves beyond illegal residence, the question inevitably becomes more difficult, because it no longer concerns border enforcement alone but the definition of membership within the political community.

Closely connected to this is the question of European identity. Is somebody European primarily because of ancestry, or does European identity also depend upon language, culture, loyalty, religion, citizenship, historical memory and participation in a common political world? If ancestry is decisive, it becomes necessary to ask where the boundary lies. Is one immigrant ancestor enough to make somebody permanently less European, or does this distinction disappear after several generations? Conversely, can someone whose ancestors came from outside Europe genuinely become European through linguistic, cultural and political assimilation? These questions are not marginal details within the remigration debate. They determine whether European identity is understood as a living historical culture capable of integrating newcomers or as a largely genealogical category whose boundaries can never truly be crossed.

The discussion also touched upon questions that are often neglected when migration is treated primarily as a demographic problem. One of these concerns the economic system that makes mass immigration attractive to governments and employers in the first place. It is difficult to criticise large-scale immigration consistently while refusing to examine an economic model that depends upon continuous population growth, cheap labour and a constantly expanding consumer base. Another concerns foreign policy. If Western governments contribute to the destabilisation of regions in Africa or the Middle East through war, intervention or geopolitical competition, it is reasonable to ask whether European states bear at least some responsibility for the migration pressures that can follow from such instability.

Finally, the conversation raised an issue that deserves particular attention from conservatives themselves: the danger of making political membership too easily reversible. Hannah Arendt’s reflections on statelessness and totalitarianism remain relevant because they remind us that rights do not exist in an institutional vacuum. A political order that grants itself the power to redefine established members of society as merely provisional inhabitants may initially use that power against groups that many conservatives distrust, but the same legal instruments can later be turned against political opponents. This does not automatically invalidate every proposal for differentiated citizenship, but it means that such proposals must be examined with considerably more caution than is sometimes the case.

My own conclusion after the conversation is therefore neither a simple rejection nor an endorsement of remigration as a political project. There are important insights within Sellner’s analysis, particularly concerning political accountability, demographic continuity and the weakness of contemporary populist governments. At the same time, Engels raises fundamental objections that lead toward a broader question. Europe does not merely face a migration crisis. It faces a crisis concerning what Europe itself wishes to preserve, transmit and ultimately become. The demographic question is therefore real, but it cannot be separated from questions of culture, political morality, economics, religion and historical continuity.

Remigration as a watchdog on the populist Right

One of the strongest arguments in favour of movements such as Sellner’s and organisations associated with the Remigration Institute is that they can function as a watchdog to the right of electoral populism. Across Europe, political parties have repeatedly discovered that opposition rhetoric and governmental practice are two very different things. It is relatively easy to campaign against mass migration, promise stricter border controls and criticise multiculturalism while one remains in opposition. Once a party enters government, however, it encounters pressure from employers, bureaucracies, courts, European institutions, coalition partners and international agreements. As a result, political movements that were elected partly because of their restrictive migration rhetoric may ultimately tolerate considerably more immigration than their supporters expected.

The experience of Poland under Law and Justice illustrates part of this contradiction. PiS built much of its political identity around resistance to compulsory relocation schemes and criticism of Western European migration policies, yet Poland simultaneously became increasingly dependent upon foreign labour and issued very large numbers of work permits and visas. The later visa scandal made the contradiction particularly damaging because it appeared to demonstrate a gap between the party’s public rhetoric and administrative reality. Italy under Giorgia Meloni presents a comparable, although not identical, tension. Meloni has pursued a considerably harder line on irregular migration across the Mediterranean while at the same time accepting substantial numbers of legal labour migrants because of the demands of the Italian economy. One can defend such a distinction between illegal and legal migration, but from Sellner’s perspective the demographic consequences remain relevant regardless of the legal category through which migration occurs.

This is precisely where an extra-parliamentary movement can have a useful political role. It can continue asking populist parties whether their actual policies correspond with the demographic promises that helped bring them to power. Electoral parties are naturally inclined toward compromise because they need to govern, maintain coalitions and respond to immediate economic pressures. Movements outside government are less constrained by these considerations and can therefore maintain pressure on parties that might otherwise gradually abandon their original objectives. In that limited sense, the Remigration Institute and similar organisations can serve as ideological watchdogs whose function is not necessarily to govern directly, but to prevent political parties from reducing migration criticism to campaign rhetoric.

The same dynamic may become relevant in France if Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella or another representative of the Rassemblement National eventually gains national executive power. A government may promise a dramatic change in immigration policy, but once in office it will confront employers demanding workers, European legal constraints, diplomatic pressures and a state administration that may resist rapid transformation. Movements operating outside the parliamentary system can therefore play a role by continuously measuring such governments against the promises that brought them electoral support. This does not mean that their preferred policy must necessarily be adopted in full, but it does mean that political accountability should not stop on election night.

The political importance of events

A second interesting element in Sellner’s position is his emphasis on the importance of major political events. Democratic politics is often imagined as a slow and predictable process in which parties gradually gain support, elections occur at regular intervals and governments change through institutional procedures. History, however, rarely unfolds in such an orderly manner. Certain events suddenly transform political consciousness and make previously marginal issues appear urgent. Migration crises, terrorist attacks, wars, economic collapses or episodes of major public disorder can change the political atmosphere within weeks in ways that ordinary campaigning might not achieve over several years.

The recent tensions surrounding Ceuta provide an example of how border crises can suddenly bring migration back to the centre of political debate. Irrespective of how one interprets the causes or the humanitarian dimensions of such events, images of large numbers of people attempting to cross a border can transform migration from an abstract discussion about statistics into an immediate question of sovereignty and state capacity. Sellner’s broader political insight is therefore that movements should be prepared to act rapidly when such moments occur rather than placing all their hopes in the next scheduled election.

His reference to 9/11 illustrates the type of political transformation he has in mind. The point is not that a migration crisis should be equated with a terrorist attack, but that certain events can create a before and an after in political consciousness. They alter the questions voters ask, the policies governments consider legitimate and the boundaries of what can be publicly discussed. Movements that have already developed organisations, arguments and networks before such an event occurs may suddenly acquire an influence that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. Political mobilisation can therefore operate outside the electoral calendar and exert pressure on governments before citizens are given another opportunity to vote.

At the same time, the political power of such events also carries a more institutional danger. Moments of crisis can create a climate in which measures that would normally encounter strong resistance suddenly become politically acceptable. The aftermath of 9/11 offers an obvious example. The attacks did not merely transform public attitudes toward security and terrorism; they also helped legitimise a broader geopolitical response that contributed to a new cycle of military interventions, instability and, indirectly, further migratory pressures. At the domestic level, the same security logic facilitated far-reaching expansions of surveillance, intelligence powers and restrictions on privacy and civil liberties. The lesson is therefore not that political movements should refrain from mobilising around major events, but that crises can be exploited by many different political actors and for very different purposes. A movement that recognises the mobilising potential of such moments should consequently remain aware that the same exceptional atmosphere can also be used by governments to justify policies that ultimately strengthen executive power, weaken civil liberties or produce consequences that contradict the original political objective.

Graduated citizenship and political loyalty

Another proposal discussed during the conversation concerns the idea of a more gradual or differentiated form of citizenship. There is a legitimate intuition behind this position. European states sometimes grant extensive social, economic and eventually political rights relatively quickly without demanding much evidence that newcomers have developed a deeper attachment to the society in which they live. Permanent residence, access to social benefits, family reunification and ultimately citizenship may be obtained according to legal and administrative criteria that do not necessarily tell us much about cultural integration or political loyalty.

This creates a feeling of asymmetry among parts of the native European population. The welfare state is not merely a neutral administrative machine that appeared spontaneously. It was constructed over generations through taxation, social trust, political stability and a willingness to accept considerable obligations toward people with whom citizens believed they shared a common political community. When newcomers receive access to these institutions while openly rejecting the society that created them, resentment is hardly surprising. The problem becomes even sharper when individuals acquire voting rights and subsequently support political projects that many native citizens believe weaken the historical culture of the country itself.

A system of staged membership could therefore contain reasonable elements. Temporary residence, permanent residence and citizenship do not necessarily need to be treated as equivalent forms of belonging. Language acquisition, economic participation, knowledge of national institutions and evidence of long-term commitment could legitimately form part of the path toward full citizenship. Political communities have always distinguished between visitors, residents and citizens, and there is nothing inherently illiberal about requiring a meaningful process before granting someone permanent membership.

The danger emerges when gradual accession to citizenship becomes permanent gradation within citizenship itself. There is a major difference between saying that citizenship should be difficult to acquire and saying that a legally acquired citizenship remains permanently conditional because of ethnic ancestry. The first approach may strengthen citizenship by giving it greater significance, while the second risks emptying citizenship of its political meaning altogether. If someone is born in Europe, speaks the language, has been educated there, participates in its institutions and belongs to a family that has lived there for several generations, yet nevertheless remains a political outsider because of distant ancestry, then assimilation becomes conceptually impossible.

This is one of the questions to which the remigration framework still needs a more convincing answer. If an immigrant and his descendants can never fully become members of the people, then the concept of assimilation loses most of its substance. One can reasonably argue that assimilation takes more than a passport and that cultural belonging cannot be created by administrative decree. It is more difficult, however, to argue that no amount of cultural participation, loyalty or historical continuity can ever overcome genealogical origin. At that point political identity risks becoming a permanent ethnic classification rather than a historical community capable of incorporating new members.

David Engels and the European political scale

David Engels raised another fundamental objection by emphasising the political structure of Europe itself. The European Union is currently poorly equipped for the kind of civilisation-wide transformation imagined by many advocates of remigration. Migration policy already operates through overlapping levels of national law, European law, international conventions, the Schengen system, bilateral agreements and judicial institutions. Even a strongly restrictionist government in one country therefore finds itself operating within a much larger legal and political framework.

This makes the idea of a purely national solution increasingly difficult. Sellner often speaks in terms of European demographic continuity, yet many of the political instruments available to the Right remain organised primarily at the level of the nation-state. Engels’ argument points toward the need for a stronger European political centre capable of thinking strategically at the level of the continent. His comparison with Augustus and the Roman Principate is useful here, even if it should obviously not be interpreted as a literal political programme. The Augustan analogy refers to the emergence of a central authority capable of restoring order, providing political direction and linking institutional transformation with cultural renewal.

Contemporary Europe possesses nothing comparable. The presidency of the European Commission, currently associated with figures such as Ursula von der Leyen, remains primarily managerial and bureaucratic rather than civilisational. The European Union can regulate markets, distribute funds, negotiate trade agreements and produce extensive legislation, but it possesses only a weak conception of what Europe should represent historically. Its political language is predominantly procedural, economic and juridical. It speaks more comfortably about standards, rights and regulations than about civilisation, inheritance, historical destiny or cultural continuity.

One of the more interesting areas of agreement between Sellner and Engels is therefore that European conservatives may ultimately need to think more Europeanly rather than simply defending a collection of fully independent nation-states. This is paradoxical because much of the contemporary European Right developed through opposition to Brussels. Nevertheless, migration, defence, geopolitics, energy, technology and demographic decline increasingly operate on a continental scale. Europe cannot respond effectively to these developments if every nation understands its sovereignty entirely in isolation from the others.

A stronger European political identity does not necessarily require the abolition of national identities. Europe has historically consisted of overlapping loyalties rather than one homogeneous national culture. A Fleming, Frenchman, Italian or Pole can remain attached to his own nation while also recognising himself as part of a wider European civilisation. The more important question is whether Europe can develop institutions capable of protecting that civilisation without reducing it either to bureaucratic federalism or to a loose alliance of states that are unable to act collectively.

Christianity and the limits of collective judgement

A second tension raised by Engels concerns Christian morality and the treatment of individuals as members of ethnic groups. Christianity places enormous emphasis on the moral value of the individual person. Political decisions, however, inevitably operate through categories. States must distinguish between citizens and non-citizens, residents and visitors, refugees and economic migrants, and people who possess a legal right to remain and those who do not. No immigration policy can function entirely through individual moral biographies.

The difficulty begins when political categories become complete moral identities. It is one thing to argue that political communities possess the right to regulate entry and distinguish between members and non-members. It is another to suggest that the moral and political meaning of an individual can be reduced almost entirely to demographic ancestry. A conservative position should therefore distinguish between legitimate collective political decisions and the assumption that every member of a group possesses the same relationship to the political community.

This tension becomes especially important when a movement simultaneously claims to defend Europe’s Christian inheritance. A Christian conception of the person is difficult to reconcile with the idea that an individual can never escape the collective category into which he was born, regardless of his actions, loyalties or cultural formation. Christianity does not require states to abolish borders or grant citizenship indiscriminately, but it does create a moral obstacle to treating persons as completely interchangeable demographic units. A European conservatism that wishes to defend Christian civilisation should therefore be careful not to adopt an anthropology that contradicts one of the civilisation’s own central moral inheritances.

Who belongs to the political “we”?

For me personally, the most important part of the conversation concerned the question of whether cultural and political affinity can sometimes be stronger than ethnic affinity. A conservative European Christian may disagree fundamentally with a conservative Muslim about theology, but they can nevertheless share important convictions concerning family, transcendence, authority, social responsibility, moral limits and the dangers of radical individualism. At the same time, that Christian conservative may share almost none of these convictions with an ethnically European progressive liberal who understands freedom primarily as unlimited individual autonomy and regards inherited religion, family structures and national traditions with suspicion.

This creates a difficult question about the meaning of political solidarity. Sellner’s position appears to imply that the progressive liberal European remains part of the national or ethnic community regardless of ideological disagreement, whereas the conservative Muslim of second or third generation remains fundamentally external to it. Some form of assimilation may be possible, but ancestry continues to establish an important boundary. I find this distinction understandable as a description of historical ethnicity, but insufficient as a complete theory of political community.

Ancestry obviously matters. Peoples are not arbitrary collections of individuals who happen to possess the same passport, and a society cannot be separated entirely from family continuity, historical memory and inherited ways of life. Yet ancestry alone is unable to explain why a political community should exist or what it should pursue. A population can remain demographically continuous while becoming culturally and politically unrecognisable. Conversely, people of different origins can gradually become part of the same historical community through language, education, marriage, loyalty, shared institutions and participation in a common destiny.

The danger of treating descendants of immigrants as permanent outsiders is also strategic. If second- and third-generation Europeans who have adopted culturally conservative positions are told that they can never become fully part of the European political community, they are pushed away from precisely the political alliance that could challenge progressive liberalism. A conservative Muslim who opposes radical individualism, the commercialisation of sexuality or the disappearance of traditional family structures may have substantial political interests in common with Christian conservatives. Treating him as an eternal outsider while simultaneously describing an aggressively anti-traditional European progressive as an unquestioned member of the national community creates a political paradox that deserves more attention.

Aristotle and the purpose of political community

Aristotle offers a useful alternative framework because his understanding of politics is centred not merely on identity but on purpose. For Aristotle, the political community does not exist only to prevent violence, protect property or facilitate economic exchange. The polis ultimately exists for the sake of the good life. Political life is therefore inseparable from questions of virtue, education and the kind of human beings a community wishes to form.

This perspective changes the migration discussion in an important way. Instead of beginning only with the question of who belongs, it asks what the political community exists to achieve. A society that has no conception of the good beyond economic prosperity and individual freedom will struggle to assimilate newcomers because it has very little substantive content into which they could assimilate. It may teach them administrative procedures and constitutional rules, but it cannot easily transmit a way of life if it no longer believes in one itself.

This also exposes the limits of purely demographic conservatism. Imagine that Europe stopped all immigration tomorrow and that its population became almost completely stable in ethnic terms. If birth rates nevertheless continued collapsing, churches became empty, historical education disappeared, family formation weakened, pornography shaped the sexual imagination of younger generations, architecture became increasingly functional and citizens understood freedom only as personal preference, it would be difficult to claim that European civilisation had thereby been saved. The demographic shell might remain intact while the cultural substance disappeared.

Aristotle’s conception of political community therefore suggests that European renewal requires a positive orientation toward the good. It requires some answer to the question of what kind of citizens Europe wishes to cultivate. That question concerns education, virtue, family, public culture, aesthetics and political responsibility as much as it concerns borders. A civilisation cannot remain healthy merely by maintaining continuity of ancestry if the people carrying that ancestry no longer understand what they are expected to preserve.

Roger Scruton and the transmission of beauty

Roger Scruton provides another valuable perspective because his conservatism was fundamentally concerned with inheritance, belonging and beauty. A civilisation is not simply a political system. It consists of languages, architecture, landscapes, music, rituals, institutions, memories and forms of behaviour that were created by previous generations and entrusted to those who came later. Conservatism in this sense is not simply opposition to change. It is the recognition that certain inherited things possess value precisely because they connect generations to one another.

Scruton’s reflections on beauty are particularly relevant because people protect what they have learned to love. A beautiful city, church, landscape or musical tradition can create a sense of belonging that no abstract constitutional formula can reproduce. Cultural preservation therefore depends upon more than legislation. It depends upon cultivating affection for the inherited world. A society that teaches its children to regard their own history primarily as a source of guilt will eventually struggle to persuade them that anything within that history deserves protection.

This creates an important problem for assimilation. Before Europeans demand that newcomers assimilate, they must be capable of explaining what they are asking newcomers to assimilate into. If European identity is reduced to consumer capitalism, secular individualism, administrative citizenship and abstract tolerance, then deeper cultural assimilation becomes nearly impossible. One cannot expect newcomers to develop attachment to a civilisation whose own members increasingly hesitate to describe as worthy of admiration.

The question of cultural transmission therefore has to precede or at least accompany the demographic question. Europe must recover a positive conception of its artistic, philosophical, religious and historical inheritance. Only a civilisation that believes it possesses something valuable can reasonably expect others to adopt it. In that sense, the failure of assimilation is not always merely a failure on the part of immigrants. It can also reflect the inability of the host society to articulate what it expects to be assimilated.

How migration criticism can accidentally defend progressive liberalism

Engels also drew attention to a paradox that increasingly appears on parts of the European Right. Some conservatives criticise Islam primarily because many Muslims retain socially conservative views concerning gender, sexuality, religion and family. In doing so, they sometimes begin defending precisely the progressive liberal values that they would otherwise criticise. Pride politics, radical secularism or individualistic sexual ethics suddenly become symbols of “European civilisation” because they can be used rhetorically against conservative Islam.

This creates a serious contradiction. A movement that spends years criticising the dissolution of traditional family structures cannot suddenly present that dissolution as a core European achievement simply because a Muslim rejects it. If conservatism defines Europe primarily through opposition to Islam, it allows Islam itself to determine the content of European identity. Whatever Muslims oppose becomes “European”, even when those same values emerged only recently and often in direct opposition to much of Europe’s historical moral tradition.

None of this means that conflicts between European culture and particular Islamic doctrines should be ignored. There are real tensions concerning religious law, freedom of expression, integration, gender relations and political loyalty, and conservatives should not romanticise these differences merely because some Muslims share conservative positions on family or sexuality. The point is rather that Europe requires a positive definition of itself. It must know what it wishes to defend independently of what Islam, liberalism or any other external ideological reference point believes.

This also creates the possibility of a broader conservative political bloc. A socially conservative immigrant or descendant of immigrants may share important political interests with native European conservatives, even while substantial religious disagreements remain. Excluding such people permanently from the political community may weaken the ability to resist a progressive liberal ideology that both groups consider destructive. Political alliances do not require complete cultural identity, but they do require some shared conception of the good.

Hannah Arendt and the danger of reversible citizenship

The proposal to make political rights more conditional also requires serious reflection on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarian systems and statelessness. Arendt recognised that rights become dangerously fragile when individuals lose secure membership within a political community. Her idea of the “right to have rights” pointed toward the paradox that abstract human rights often become least effective precisely when a person no longer possesses the institutional protection of citizenship.

This insight matters for conservatives because powers created for one political purpose rarely remain confined to that purpose. A government might initially introduce mechanisms for withdrawing political rights from people considered insufficiently integrated or hostile to the national community. Supporters may assume that such mechanisms will be applied only to migrants or naturalised citizens whose loyalty is considered questionable. Once such a principle is accepted, however, the category of disloyalty can be expanded.

A future government might decide that political extremists constitute a comparable threat to social cohesion. Another could broaden the definition of extremism to include radical nationalists, religious conservatives or opponents of particular social policies. Institutions developed by a conservative government to exclude one category of residents could therefore later be used by a progressive government against the conservative population itself. The question is not merely whether the first application of the law appears justified, but what kind of political instrument is being created for future governments.

This does not mean that citizenship must be absolutely irreversible under every circumstance. Fraud, treason or certain cases of dual nationality can produce legitimate legal debates. The more important principle is that withdrawal of citizenship or fundamental political rights should remain exceptional, clearly defined and protected against arbitrary political interpretation. A conservative movement that is already suspicious of bureaucratic and ideological power should be particularly cautious about creating mechanisms that allow the state to redefine who belongs to the political community.

Migration and the economic system

One question that deserves greater attention than it often receives concerns the economic structures behind mass migration. European governments do not accept large numbers of migrants only because of humanitarian ideology or cultural liberalism. Employers frequently demand foreign workers because of labour shortages, wage pressures and ageing populations. Governments simultaneously worry about declining ratios between workers and pensioners and therefore see migration as one possible method of stabilising public finances.

This creates an internal contradiction for parts of the political Right. A party may defend free-market policies that encourage maximum labour mobility while also demanding a dramatic reduction in immigration. Yet if the economic model depends upon low labour costs and continuous population growth, pressure for immigration will return regardless of the government’s ideological position. The question of migration is therefore inseparable from the organisation of the labour market.

A genuinely migration-critical programme would consequently have to consider wages, automation, housing costs, taxation, family policy and demographic incentives. If European societies make family formation increasingly expensive while simultaneously importing labour to compensate for falling birth rates, migration becomes part of a much larger structural problem. A society cannot discourage its own citizens from having children through housing insecurity and economic pressure, construct entire sectors around cheap labour, and then treat the resulting demand for immigration as an entirely separate phenomenon.

This is one reason why remigration cannot function as a complete political programme. Removing migrants without reforming the economic incentives that produced demand for immigration would merely recreate the original pressure after a few years. The demographic problem therefore needs to be integrated into a wider debate about economic sovereignty and the social purpose of the economy itself.

Foreign policy and responsibility

The same broadening of perspective is required in foreign policy. European migration debates often begin at the border, as though the political history of migrants starts only when they arrive in Italy, Spain or Greece. In reality, migration results from a complex interaction of demographic growth, poverty, state collapse, war, criminal networks, political repression and expectations about life in Europe.

European states obviously cannot be held responsible for every crisis outside Europe. Governments in Africa and the Middle East possess agency of their own, and it would be paternalistic to explain all their problems exclusively through Western actions. Nevertheless, European and American foreign policy has at times contributed to destabilisation, and it is intellectually inconsistent to refuse even to consider the migratory consequences of such interventions.

A conservative foreign policy should therefore combine border control with geopolitical prudence. Europe can maintain the right to determine who enters its territory while simultaneously acknowledging that unnecessary military interventions or reckless destabilisation can create precisely the population movements European governments later struggle to control. The two positions are not contradictory. In fact, they reinforce one another because both are based upon the idea that political decisions have consequences and that states should take responsibility for those consequences.

Rome and the question of cultural transmission

The final issue, and perhaps the most fundamental one, concerns the culture that Europeans actually intend to transmit. The comparison with Roman antiquity is revealing because ancient Rome absorbed enormous numbers of outsiders without immediately losing its identity. Roman civilisation possessed sufficiently strong institutions and cultural prestige that provincial populations gradually adopted Roman law, language, citizenship and forms of political identity. Later, even Germanic peoples entering the Western Empire often adopted Roman administrative practices, Christianity and elements of Roman culture.

The process was never simple and should not be romanticised. The Roman world changed through migration and the interaction between Roman and Germanic peoples. Yet the decisive point is that Roman culture possessed enough substance to transform newcomers while also being transformed by them. Romanisation was possible because there was something recognisably Roman that could be adopted.

Contemporary Europe faces a more difficult situation because it is increasingly uncertain about what precisely it wishes to transmit. The official European vocabulary often consists primarily of tolerance, non-discrimination, procedural democracy, individual choice and economic freedom. These principles may be valuable, but they are insufficient to constitute a civilisation. A civilisation also requires historical memory, stories, architecture, religious and philosophical inheritance, models of excellence and some conception of what deserves admiration.

This means that Europe’s cultural crisis cannot be blamed entirely on immigration. European children whose ancestors have lived on the continent for centuries can grow up knowing almost nothing about classical philosophy, Roman history, Christianity, medieval civilisation, European literature or the artistic traditions of their own nations. Such individuals may be ethnically European while remaining culturally disconnected from Europe. Ancestry without transmission produces demographic continuity without civilisational continuity.

The Roman comparison therefore teaches a more complicated lesson than either multiculturalists or ethnic nationalists often assume. Peoples change through migration, but successful assimilation requires a host civilisation strong enough to shape newcomers. The question is not whether European identity must remain completely unchanged, because no historical civilisation ever has. The question is whether Europe can maintain enough continuity that change occurs within an identifiable cultural framework rather than through simple dissolution.

The deeper European crisis

This is where my own scepticism toward an exclusively demographic interpretation of European decline becomes strongest. The demographic question is real and should not be dismissed. Borders matter, numbers matter and the speed of demographic transformation matters. A society can absorb a limited number of newcomers more easily than migration on a scale that transforms entire neighbourhoods and institutions within a generation.

Nevertheless, stopping immigration alone would not resolve the deeper crisis. Europe also faces declining birth rates, weakening families, cultural amnesia, consumerism, nihilism and a growing inability to articulate any common conception of the good. Many Europeans no longer know why their inherited culture should be preserved, while others understand European identity almost entirely through material prosperity and individual freedom. Under such conditions, even an ethnically homogeneous Europe could continue declining.

The crisis is therefore simultaneously demographic, cultural and philosophical. If we isolate the ethnic-cultural demographic question from discussions about culture, economics and geopolitics, we risk treating one visible symptom as though it were the entire disease. Europe requires control over migration, but it also requires an answer to nihilism, decadence and cultural fragmentation. It needs to recover some confidence in its own historical inheritance without pretending that this inheritance has ever been completely static or homogeneous.

My own priority would therefore be to ask what kind of European civilisation we want future generations to inherit. That includes the question of who belongs, but it cannot be reduced to ancestry. A European political community needs historical continuity, cultural memory and loyalty, but it also needs a conception of political purpose. It must know what kind of family life, education, architecture, morality and public culture it wants to preserve.

Conclusion

The conversation between Martin Sellner and David Engels was valuable precisely because it revealed a deeper disagreement within the European conservative and New Right milieu. Sellner is right to insist that demographic continuity cannot simply be dismissed and that political parties should be judged by their actual migration policies rather than their rhetoric. His emphasis on extra-parliamentary pressure is also important because populist parties frequently moderate once they enter government. A movement such as the Remigration Institute can therefore play a useful role by forcing migration-critical parties to confront the gap between promises and political reality.

Engels’ criticisms, however, point toward a broader problem that remigration alone cannot solve. Europe does not merely suffer from insufficiently controlled borders. It suffers from uncertainty about what Europe itself represents. A civilisation that cannot explain what it wishes to preserve will eventually find it difficult both to transmit that inheritance to its own children and to demand that newcomers assimilate into it.

For that reason, the central question should not be reduced to whether someone possesses the correct ancestry. Ancestry remains an important part of historical identity, but it cannot be the only criterion of political belonging. Loyalty, language, cultural participation, historical memory and willingness to assume obligations toward the community must also matter. Otherwise assimilation becomes logically impossible and European identity risks becoming little more than a genealogical classification.

Aristotle offers a useful corrective because he reminds us that political community exists for a conception of the good life, while Scruton reminds us that people preserve what they have learned to love and regard as beautiful. These perspectives suggest that European renewal must begin with a positive civilisational project rather than with exclusion alone. Europe must rediscover what deserves to be inherited, what obligations one generation has toward the next and what cultural forms can create continuity across time.

This does not make migration irrelevant. On the contrary, migration policy becomes more meaningful once it is placed within a broader conception of civilisation. A confident Europe should be capable of controlling its borders, demanding meaningful assimilation and establishing demanding conditions for citizenship. At the same time, it should also be capable of recognising successful assimilation when it genuinely occurs and of avoiding legal instruments that could later undermine the rights of the political community as a whole.

The ultimate problem is therefore larger than remigration. The most important question is not simply who should leave Europe, but what Europe itself wants to remain. If Europeans no longer know what their civilisation is, demographic continuity alone will not save it. If, however, Europe can recover a sense of cultural confidence, historical memory and political purpose, then migration can be addressed as one part of a much broader project of European renewal rather than as the single explanation for European decline.